Angels’ Skid Hits 10; Snow Is Sent Down : Baseball: The first baseman, batting .223, sits out the team’s 11-4 loss to the Athletics.

The crowd around J.T. Snow’s locker was deeper than it had been in months. After the reporters filled their notebooks with the words Snow uttered in quiet tones, his teammates drifted by to offer handshakes and words of encouragement.

Gary DiSarcina, Chuck Finley, Mark Langston and Scott Sanderson lingered longest of all. Snow stood in his shorts and a T-shirt, seemingly grateful for the company.

In the end, the Angels’ 10th consecutive loss, by 11-4 to the Oakland Athletics on Monday night at Anaheim Stadium, took a back seat to the news that Snow had been sent to triple-A Vancouver.

Snow, who sat out the game, didn’t learn of the move until after the Angels tied the Detroit Tigers for the longest losing streak in the major leagues this season. At first he seemed stunned, his words trailing off, his sentences left unfinished.

“Maybe a change of scenery . . .” he said. “I’ll go down there for a month or so . . .”

That is indeed the Angels’ plan, according to Manager Buck Rodgers, who hopes Snow will snap out of a slump that has wiped out memories of a superb April. He batted .343 with six home runs and 17 RBIs and earned American League player-of-the-week honors for April 19-25.

But his average on Monday was .223 and he has only five homers and 26 RBIs since April.

“I think (his fast start) gave him some delusions of grandeur,” Rodgers said. “For a while, it took him out of being a line-drive hitter, which he is. Now he’s got to get back to being a line-drive hitter.

“I think he knows he needs it (moving to triple A). I know he needs it. We are doing the right thing. This move is going to help him. The whole thing is about getting him back on track.”

That fact was not lost on Snow, who displayed no bitterness, only a desire to return to Anaheim as quickly as possible. In the meantime, he will be replaced on the roster by Ty Van Burkleo, who was batting .272 with five home runs and 47 RBIs in 94 games at Vancouver.

The Angels also promoted third baseman Eddie Perez, son of former Cincinnati Red Tony Perez, from Vancouver and demoted infielder Jim Walewander. The club will decide where to put Walewander, who had appeared in three games with the Angels since July 16.

“I’m going down there to work my butt off and get back here,” Snow said. “They said I’ll be back in September. They felt that I needed to get jump-started. Maybe a change of scenery. . . . I’ll go down there and get going again.”

Snow’s poor hitting simply didn’t stop, no matter how hard he tried or how much time he spent with Angel hitting instructor Rod Carew, trying to smooth out his swing.

In May, he cooled to .124--11 for 89. In June, he rebounded to hit .284--21 for 74. But this month, he had slumped again--to .150.

He was four for 32 on the recent 11-game trip to Cleveland, Boston and New York. Only his fielding--three errors in 91 games--seemed to be keeping him in the lineup.

He is confident he can turn things around in the minors, but Rodgers isn’t predicting anything dramatic.

“It’s not going to be easy for him,” Rodgers said. “He’s not going to go to the minors and clean up, I guarantee you. I hope he gets straightened out in two weeks.”

If so, don’t look for Snow to return to the Angels that quickly. They want him to stay in Vancouver until the major league rosters can be expanded to 40 players on Sept. 1.

“I’ve got to get back to play the game the way I know I can,” Snow said. “I think with the start I got off to--I knew it was a quick start for me, I knew I didn’t feel like I had to carry it through the whole year--I didn’t really press.

“It’s nobody’s fault but my own. I have to produce and play well and I’m not doing it.”

If the Angels thought things couldn’t get any worse than blowing an eight-run lead in a 9-8 loss to the New York Yankees Sunday, they were wrong.

It wasn’t so much what happened Monday, but how it happened.

Angel starter Finley, 2-12 lifetime against the A’s, walked leadoff hitter Rickey Henderson, then gave up five consecutive hits.

Brent Gates singled. Ruben Sierra doubled home Henderson. Terry Steinbach hit a three-run homer that popped out of Angel center fielder Chad Curtis’ glove and over the fence. Dave Henderson homered to center. Craig Paquette singled.

Finally, Troy Neel grounded out. But Mike Bordick followed with an RBI single and Finley (11-8) was out of the game after the second-shortest start of his career.

Steinbach’s homer was the fourth in his career off Finley and raised his career average to .473 (18 for 38) against the left-hander. Curtis appeared to have the ball in his glove perhaps a foot below the top of the wall but when he snapped the glove shut the ball popped out. Soon enough, Curtis was sprinting back to the fence in a futile attempt to snare Henderson’s home run.

The A’s scored eight runs, the most the Angels have given up in an inning since the Minnesota Twins scored nine in the fifth inning of a game at the Metrodome on April 20, 1990.